15 top intercontinental destinations out of BRU

[OO-ITR]

BRU and SN (LH Group and Star Alliance) want to connect the 15 largest destinations (in terms of number of pax) with BRU with a direct flight.
Does anyone have an idea which are these 15 destinations. 7 of them have already a direct flight with BRU.
I know NY was number one and also Bangkok scoring high...
What are your ideas on this?

[SabenaForever]

I think these could be one of them:

- Boston
- Tokyo
- Johannesburg
- San Francisco
- Singapore
- Dubai
- Sao Paulo

[b-west]

Oh, let it be Singapore please...

[BekEBBR]

It could be great...

[OO-ITR]

Oh, let it be Singapore please...

I assume they want to persuade Singapore Airlines to open the route. The same counts for ANA and Tokyo.
Although it would be nice that SN would open those routes. But I guess their focus is on Africa and North America right now.

[Inquirer]

I think South Africa could do really well from BRU, on condition they go for Cape Town instead of the usual Johannesburg.

Everybody always talks about Johannesburg when thinking about South Africa, but with most of the Flemish/Dutch diaspora living along the Cape coast anyway, Cape Town would be better to serve this group of people than Johannesburg is, with the added benefit that tickets there are significantly higher priced than those to much more frequently served Johannesburg.

If I am not mistaken, no Lufthansa airline currently serves Cape Town because it is just a secondary destination in South Africa globally speaking, yet it does have a rather unique natural market from Flanders and The Netherlands and of course BRU is very well connected with the UK and NY to feed such a route to South Africa, so I'd say Cape Town could work for them, especially if South African codeshares on the route.

I know Sabena used to serve Johannesburg in the past and lost tons of money on it, but IMHO that was because they just didn't understand the importance of the Cape to Dutch speakers and went to the same city like everybody else. Seriously, Cape Town is to Dutch speakers what Montreal is to the French speakers; I never understood why Sabena didn't see the chance fit to go off the beaten track and serve the coastal city instead?

[Stij]

I think South Africa could do really well from BRU, on condition they go for Cape Town instead of the usual Johannesburg.

Although I would love a direct flight to CPT (flying the route BRU-LHR-CPT in less then two weeks myself) I'm afraid yields will be very low and very seasonal: It's a looooooong VFR route and the few business travelers that fly the route come mostly from the UK.

Maybe the connections from secondary airports in the UK could fill it up with Business Travelers that are fed up with BA and / or LHR, but KLM already tries that...

It could be an excellent weekly JAF 787 route though...

But when comparing CPT to JNB: I prefer to change planes in LHR, FRA or AMS over chaning in JNB even wgen it's an SN operated flight.

Cheers,

Stij

[EBKT]

Should a triangular flight BRU-JNB-CPT not be a good solution? Should the South African government allow this? Probably this simple idea is not so easy like it sounds, otherwise other carriers probably should been considering this as well is suppose.

[sn26567]

Even a large country like Great Britain misses some intercontinental links. Here is the list of the 10 top wanted destinations out of Britain:

Bogota (Colombia)
Brasilia (Brazil)
Chengdu (China)
Dammam (Saudi Arabia)
Douala (Cameroon)
Lima (Peru)
Panama City (Panama)
Phuket (Thailand)
Santiago (Chile)
Shenzhen (China)

In this list, Belgium has already links to Phuket and Douala! Let British travellers connect in Brussels!

[Flanker2]

I don't get all the excitement about SFO nor BOS.
SFO is a nice place but it's a second tier city, already served well by European competitors.

Also, SFO is not a city that can be operated daily, plus SN doesn't have the right equipment to do it.
You would need at least an A343 to do it, as due to a combination of low yields and high costs, an A332 with high CASM would be impossible to make money on.

BOS has a nice metro area and yes there is a medical connection, ie Boston Medical, and yes there are a few Belgians at MIT but O&D will not be sufficient for a daily, let alone 5 weekly flight.

BOS non-O&D competitors for pax generating elsewhere than BRU:
AF, AZ, KL, EI, BA, IB, LH, LX, UA, AC, US, DL, AA.


Compared to that, DEN has a smaller O&D potential but the non O&D will be huge:
DEN non-O&D competitors: LH, BA, UA, AC, DL, AA.
Plus, with the UA hub in DEN, SN becomes a non-O&D competitor for everything on the West coast.
2 stops from Central and West Coast to Africa and it can be done daily.

[Inquirer]

Why would anybody from the westcoast of the USA and heading to Africa be willing to first pass through DEN only to grab yet another connecting flight via BRU? That is awfully complicating things, as those passengers can make it to Africa with one stop less via for instance CDG or even some US hubs.

If you want to connect westcoast USA with Africa through BRU, i am afraid you'll need to go and get your passengers where they live rather than expect them to meet you halfway the American continent so to say and that needn't be such a problem because it may allow you to combine those passengers with point-to-point traffic which you won't have at DEN.

[OO-ITR]

And also we are talking about the most popular destinations out of BRU. So it has potential.
It's true some destinations (SFO and BOS) have already competitors but I'm sure these destinations get pax originating from BRU. So maybe time to get thise pax back! And capture a bunch of others. SN has defenitely the weapons to capture a part of the market. JFK is a good example.

[Inquirer]

If they have credible data showing sufficient Belgians (or rather people living within a certain range of BRU) go to say SFO or BOS and now use London, Paris or Amsterdam or even Chicago, New York or Atlanta to connect through, then they must certainly go for it. JFK proved they can successfully take a piece of an existing market as people will choose them for their product and/or price over long established competitors.

[sn26567]

At JFK there was a major difference: SN stepped in at a time where both 9W and AA were withdrawing their flights to/from BRU. That gave SN a huge advantage that might not be reproducible at other US destinations.

[RoMax]

At JFK there was a major difference: SN stepped in at a time where both 9W and AA were withdrawing their flights to/from BRU. That gave SN a huge advantage that might not be reproducible at other US destinations.

Both were still flying on the route when SN started and the announcements came only after 1-2 months of SN operating on the route (and achieving very high loadfactors). It's due to SN's competition in combination with the difficult economy that these two decided to withdrew from this route.

[Inquirer]

I think MR_Boeing is right. Brussels announced JFK in December last year, while Jet Air announced the closure of JFK in Spring this year and AA only in Summer even. At least that is if I use this websites search engine to check for the related topics....

[OO-ITR]

At JFK there was a major difference: SN stepped in at a time where both 9W and AA were withdrawing their flights to/from BRU. That gave SN a huge advantage that might not be reproducible at other US destinations.

Both were still flying on the route when SN started and the announcements came only after 1-2 months of SN operating on the route (and achieving very high loadfactors). It's due to SN's competition in combination with the difficult economy that these two decided to withdrew from this route.

Exactly what I wanted to respond ... 9W stopped their JFK route in September and AA in November so after SN 's launch of the JFK route.

[RoMax]

I think MR_Boeing is right. Brussels announced JFK in December last year, while Jet Air announced the closure of JFK in Spring this year and AA only in Summer even. At least that is if I use this websites search engine to check for the related topics....

Jet Airways closed reservation for the first time on June 3, reopened it shortly after, to close it again some days later and eventually confirmed the closure on June 16 (looking at the airlineroute.net posts, until that latest announcement the closure wasn't known for the big public).
American Airlines confirmed the closure of the route at the end of August (same story as with 9W in the days before, closing reservation, opening it again and eventually official announcement).
So indeed, SN competed head-on with 9W and AA for some time.

[sn26567]

9W stopped their JFK route in September and AA in November so after SN 's launch of the JFK route.

And that is why SN still has a healthy load factor on this route. But can SN hope that others will withdraw when they enter their second US route?

Talking about BOS for example: there is no direct flight from BRU, but there are direct flights to several other European airports close to BRU (AMS, CDG, FRA, LHR, ...). The number of passengers remaining constant, to be successful a new SN route should be able to reckon on the withdrawal of one or more of these flights.

[RoMax]

And that is why SN still has a healthy load factor on this route. But can SN hope that others will withdraw when they enter their second US route?

Talking about BOS for example: there is no direct flight from BRU, but there are direct flights to several other European airports close to BRU (AMS, CDG, FRA, LHR, ...). The number of passengers remaining constant, to be successful a new SN route should be able to reckon on the withdrawal of one or more of these flights.

Indeed, but that's the way how competition works, isn't it? BOS (and SFO to name something else) have a strong O&D market, currently served by competitors (BOS and SFO) or via UA-hubs (SFO). If SN knows they can secure some important business contracts to start with, they can try to launch the competition with other carriers. They proved with JFK they are able to do it (they stole quite some important business contracts away and currently US business are said to be asking for more NYC and IAD flights).
If SN wants to expand in North-American they can't run away from the competition for ever (because it's all over the place), like they did the previous 10 years.